Roger Lynn
July 16, 2017
(click here for the audio for this sermon)
We find ourselves in the midst of summer. Long, warm days. No major holidays on the horizon. The stuff of which everyday life is made. What can we say about such times? Where do we find evidence of the Sacred in these days which stretch before us?
The second creation story in Genesis says that we human beings were formed from the dust of the earth. Pretty ordinary building material for something as extraordinary as the human body. And then along comes Jesus, with lots to say about the life which He was offering. He makes reference to qualities like joy and peace and hope and love. He uses descriptions like fullness and abundance. And the really exciting thing is that it is a message for all of us, all of the time. It is not something which is offered only to a chosen few. It is not something which is offered only some of the time. It has to do with everyday, ordinary, extraordinary folks like you and me, in the midst of our everyday, ordinary, extraordinary existences. The following, then, are some thoughts on God and the ordinary.
~ Frederick Buechner ~
(from The Sacred Journey & Now And Then)
It seemed to me then, and seems to me still, that if God speaks to us at all in this world, if God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks...[God] speaks not just through the sounds we hear, of course, but through events in all their complexity and variety, through the harmonies and disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens ... To try to express in even the most insightful and theologically sophisticated terms the meaning of what God speaks through the events of our lives is as precarious a business as to try to express the meaning of the sound of rain on the roof or the spectacle of the setting sun. But I choose to believe that [God] speaks nonetheless, and the reason that [God’s] words are impossible to capture in human language is of course that they are ultimately always incarnate words. They are fleshed out in the everydayness no less than the crises of our own experience ... Because the word that God speaks to us is always an incarnate word – a word spelled out to us not alphabetically, in syllables, but enigmatically, in events – the chances are we will never get it just right ... But if we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and hope, if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we come to recognize, beyond all doubt, that however faintly we may hear him, God is indeed speaking to us, and that, however little we may understand of it, God’s word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling.
~ also from Frederick Buechner ~
Listen to your life
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.
In the boredom and the pain of it
No less than in the excitement and gladness:
Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it.
Because in the last analysis
all moments are key moments,
and life itself is grace.
~ Michael Mahoney ~
There are many things to be grateful “for” but, as I ripen with the seasons of life, the many reasons blend into a sacred mystery. And, most deeply, I realize that living gratefully is its own blessing.
~ Macrina Wiederkehr ~
Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.
There are burning bushes all around you.
Every tree is full of angels.
Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.
~ Matthew Fox ~
(from Whee! We, wee)
...faith can be simply, surely and adequately understood as: an abiding trust that life is a gift ... Traditionally, prayer has been understood as praise or as thank you to God ... Our thank you for creation, our fundamental prayer, therefore, is our enjoyment and delight in it. This delight is called ecstasy when it reaches a certain height, and it is also prayer. Like all prayer, it touches the Creator and we are touched by the Creator in that act of ecstasy ... To delight in those gifts is to delight in the presence of the giver of them. The experience of ecstasy is the experience of God ... life’s greatest and freest and cheapest and most plentiful gifts are the sensual ecstasies of life.
To walk barefoot in sand or grass is sensual.
To laugh heartily is sensual.
To burp is sensual.
To get up at dawn and walk with the dew is sensual.
To take a warm shower is sensual; to take a hot bath is very sensual.
To make love is sensual.
To throw pots is sensual.
To give birth - to a child, to a picture, to a poem, to a song - is sensual.
To sleep under the stars is sensual.
To drink is sensual.
To swim is sensual.
To ski is sensual.
To lie in the sun is sensual.
To dance is sensual.
To hear opera is sensual.
To watch dancers is sensual.
To smell lilacs is sensual.
To turn over dirt by hand in a garden is sensual.
To be in darkness is sensual.
A violin is sensual; a cello is very sensual.
To cry is sensual.
To pick corn is sensual.
To hug a baby is sensual.
To get a backrub is sensual.
To be alive is sensual. Very, very sensual.
~ St. Francis of Assissi ~
I think God might be a little prejudiced.
For once He asked me to join Him on a walk
through this world,
and we gazed into every heart on this earth,
and I noticed He lingered a bit longer
before any face that was
weeping,
and before any eyes that were
laughing.
And sometimes when we passed
a soul in worship
God too would kneel
down.
I have come to learn: God
adores His
creation.
~ Ann Weems ~
(from Searching For Shalom)
O Amazing God, you come into our ordinary lives
and set a holy table among us,
filling our plates with the Bread of Life
and our cups with Salvation.
Send us out, O God,
with tenderheartedness
to touch an ordinary everyday world
with the promise of your holiness.
~~~~~
Let us, therefore, approach each day of our living, ordinary and extraordinary, with a sense of excitement and anticipation, that God is about to do wonderful things before our eyes. We can do so with confidence because God is always doing wonderful things before our eyes. Life is a gift, even when it comes wrapped in plain, ordinary paper. Enjoy!
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